As I turn and resume my climb, I’m glad I didn’t tell him about King Malaxor’s mysterious request to meet me tomorrow night.
Chapter Three
Alaya
Ten Years Previously
I was awoken abruptly from a deep sleep by the unusual sound of piercing screams, the dry, acrid smell of burning wood and a thick, cloying feel to the air.
Panic and terror rose to my chest, a heavy and acute tightening. My heart was racing as I threw the blanket off, and I leaped from one of the two single wooden beds crowded with other simple furniture in the small back bedroom. No time for dressing, I wrenched open the wooden door and raced into the main room, clad in just a thin, rough-hewn nightdress.
Both my parents were already there, my mother pulling the dresser away from the wall and searching for something behind it, my father already halfway towards the door of my room. His wide, blue-eyed look of frantic terror made the feeling in my chest tighten even more, my breathing now hard and fast and my heart beating so quickly I thought it might burst right out of me.
My father grabbed me and lifted me up into his arms, an uncomfortable manoeuvre as I was ten that year and already at that awkward long, gangly limbs stage. Yet he wanted me close, his strong arms clutching me so tightly to his chest.
“Come, Wren!” he bellowed towards my mother. I was both shocked and in awe as she drew out a long, dark metalsword from behind the dresser, its dull black blade seeming to swallow the shadows around it.
She gestured for my father to pause as she opened the back door slowly, looked out, and then motioned him to follow.
I was jostled in his arms as we all quickly darted through the shadows of each house we passed, everything already quiet in their emptiness.
“There!” My mother pointed towards an overgrown track barely visible that led away from the village deeper into the forest.
Yet before we could even take a single step towards it, the soft white glow from the moonlight seemed to be sucked from the air, and it went black as the darkest night, a thick, cloying feeling overwhelming.
I heard my mother gasp and felt her hand on my back in a protective gesture.
“A Thorn Guard, Shadow Wielder,” she hissed.
Then blind chaos. I felt a rush of wind as something darted about in the darkness, the sharp rasp of metal on metal, and cries and grunts of pain. Suddenly my father’s grip on me loosened, and I was falling.
I hit the ground hard, a whoosh of air from my lips as my breath was squeezed from my lungs. I couldn’t move; I felt heavy, like I was being pushed into the earth.
As suddenly as they appeared, the shadows receded, leaving behind an eerie silence, which made the high-pitched roar of anguish reverberate hauntingly through the trees. I managed to sit up, and a sudden, shooting pain lanced my heart as I looked over to my mother on her knees, her clothes saturated in dark crimson blood, sprays of it painting her face in a macabre mask. She was cradling my father’s limp form in her arms.
A tall dark figure loomed over them both on the forest floor, his features hard and sharp, a cruel sneer of disgust as he looked down on them. So quick I barely caught it, my mother’s hand darted out for the sword fallen to her side, and with an animalistic roar, she swept the sword up in an arc, strong and true, towards the figure. He moved at the very last second, but the sharp tip of the sword cut a long swathe through the front of his black-and-golden robe, and a thin red line wept across his bare chest.
Everything then happened so quickly. Dark armour-clad soldiers surrounded my mother; I was yanked up by my arm by another, and we were both dragged onto the small grass clearing in the middle of the village, leaving my father’s lifeless body behind. The green was lit by an orange glow from the burning wooden buildings surrounding it. We were forced to our knees, and the dark figure once again loomed over us.
“Wren Morigan. You are charged and convicted of attempted treason against your King. You and your daughter will be executed here tonight for resisting with violence against the conscription of all Earthbound Fae into my service.” He took a step closer to her, putting a long, pale finger below her chin and tilting her head up towards his gaze.
“Such a beautiful, violent waste you are,” he crooned, looking down into her defiant eyes. “You would have made a magnificent Thorn Guard.”
He paused for mere seconds, cocked his head to the side, and narrowed his eyes.
He brought his face down closer to hers, then darted a quick look towards me. He was terrifying, and the power that oozed from him made the air taste viscous and earthy in my mouth. He looked away, back into my mother’s face.
“You deserve to die, yet I find myself in need of something you have. I am willing to make you a deal—an Oath for you and your daughter’s lives. You will become what you should have always been—a Warrior in my Thorn Guard. I will spare your daughter and take her as my ward, raise her to be a Princess, and betroth her this night to wed my only son, Prince Kiernan. What will it be, Wren?”
Her head dropped forward, and the Kingdom itself seemed to hold its breath. Then her head slowly looked back up into his.
“Oath,” she rasped. He lowered his head to her ear, and I could see he whispered, too far away to hear. Her head whipped towards me, and I flinched back, jolted by the absolute terror in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry—” she started, but he grabbed her face roughly and jerked it back towards him, then crushed his pale, thin lips down to hers; the kiss devouring. Where his hands touched her cheeks, black spidery veins fanned out over her skin and down her neck, under the red spray of blood.
I tried to reach her, scrambling across the floor on hands and knees, but his hand whipped out impossibly fast. I saw it coming—pale fingers curled like claws, the black and gold of his sleeve a blur in the firelight. Then the impact.
The world exploded in white-hot pain. My head snapped to the side, and I felt something tear across my cheek, a burning line of agony that went deeper than skin. The force of the blow sent me sprawling, my small body hitting the ground hard. I tasted copper and dirt. My hands flew to my face, and when I pulled them away, they were slick and dark with blood.
